Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

This month Twitter started autoplaying Periscopestreams within its feed. While some marketers had previously been able to overlook the importance of livestreaming apps like Periscope, any brand with a strong Twitter presence is scurrying to catch up … As am I!

At the beginning of the week I had less than 10,000 “hearts” on Periscope, while popular people and brands tend to have more than a million.

So in anticipation of writing a best practices article for brands approaching Periscope, I interviewed Geoff Golberg. Geoff is one of the most famous livestreamers, with a following on Meerkat, Periscope, and Blab of over 40,000 people. On Periscope, Geoff has 6.3 million hearts.

Here are some key tips for using Periscope in combination with Twitter....

This semester’s Future of Journalism assignment centered on live streaming video. In the past two months, we’ve seen the emergence of two new apps — Meerkat and Periscope — that have turned streaming video into a niche experience into something that anyone with an iPhone can do. Streaming video has been around longer than these apps, available via services such as Ustream, but these apps have added simple, elegant interfaces and social sharing ease to the mix. Regular citizens and everyday reporters alike are now broadcast reporters.

(Editor’s note: A separate post on Meerkat ran last week, and our #EdShift chat at 1 ET Tuesday, April 14, will cover streaming services and their usefulness in classes and newsrooms.)

Consider what Dan Pfeiffer, the former press secretary for President Obama, said in a post recently about live streaming and the upcoming 2016 presidential campaign:

If 2004 was about Meetup, 2008 was about Facebook, and 2012 was about Twitter, 2016 is going to be about Meerkat (or something just like it)....

Periscope is a live video streaming application for iOS and Android. This platform allows people to share live video streams, and those are usually not available for repeated viewing. Through this live streaming platform, many companies have started to gain attention from new audiences and potential customers to their broadcasts. This has become one of the most effective ways to build followers for a particular brand. This is the latest sensation in broadcasting which companies are promoting their brands as well as earning loyal viewing figures.

Brands are using Periscope to scope their runway shows or to make an announcement about their product launch or for press events or even to get a sneak peek behind the scenes; be it the green room of a celebrity, parties of famous sports persons, and so on....

There’s a great deal to consider when building a social strategy. New social networks are popping up all the time, so it’s essential that marketers stay in the know.

Well, the next big thing is here.

With service providers expanding 4G networks and wifi available almost everywhere you go, live streaming is where it’s at now. And no app does live streaming better than Periscope.

The possibilities for marketers are endless; you have the opportunity to define the uses of this new application for your own business purposes....